For many years agricultural balers have been used to consolidate and package crop material so as to facilitate the storage and handling of the crop material for later use. Usually, a mower-conditioner cuts and conditions the crop material for windrow drying in the sun. When the cut crop material is properly dried, a baler, for example a round baler, travels along the windrows to pick up the crop material and form it into cylindrically-shaped round bales.
More specifically, pickups of the baler gather the cut and windrowed crop material from the ground then convey the cut crop material into a bale-forming chamber within the baler. A drive mechanism operates to activate the pickups, augers, and a rotor of the feed mechanism. A conventional bale forming chamber may include of a pair of opposing sidewalls with a series of belts, chains, and/or rolls that rotate and compress the crop material into a cylindrical shaped bale. Square balers operate on similar principles but form “slices” which when stacked together form a rectangular or “square” bale.
When the bale has achieved a desired size and density, a wrapping system may wrap the bale to ensure that the bale maintains its shape and density. For example, a twine wrapping apparatus may be provided to wrap the bale of crop material while still inside the bale forming chamber. A cutting or severing mechanism may be used to cut the twine once the bale has been wrapped. The wrapped bale may be ejected from the baler and onto the ground by, for example, raising a tailgate of the baler. The tailgate is then closed and the cycle repeated as necessary and desired to manage the field of cut crop material. In some square baling machines, a formed baled is ejected out the back of the baler as a new bale is formed.
To identify a bale, the wrapping material is often provided with a tag containing information such as the size, weight, and date of the bale. It is also desirable to be able to label each bale with other important properties, such as moisture content and nutritional value. Other potential parameters of interest include but are not limited to GPS Location when bale is tied, farm name, farmer id, field name, preservative type, amount of preservative applied, etc.
Current apparatus and methods for tagging bales have many drawbacks. The existing apparatus to apply the tag can be complex and expensive. Including the tag in the wrapping material is difficult since the amount of wrap used per bale is not known until baling, consequently multiple tags may be found on each bale. A better way to tag and track each bale and its properties is needed. Applying a tag to a strand of twine is difficult.